The bulk of my programming language experience is with assorted imperative languages, but I'm currently making another attempt to actually "get" functional languages. And one of my web searches, for a good explanation of what functional programming is all about, led me to the above article; it uses XML, along with Ant and C macros, to describe how Lisp works to functional neophytes.

The Nature of Lisp wrote:

Everything we've learned about Lisp so far can be summarized by a single statement: Lisp is executable XML with a friendlier syntax.

As JSON can store the same sort of data as XML, I assume the parallels hold in your case, too.

Hah, that's neat. Though I've come to discover long ago that converting XML to JSON is not a friendly process. The PHP way is actually kind of buggy - you get correct translations in some cases but you lose data in others.

As for what json++ will be useful for, it will be useful for my brain as the project will provide learning and experience. And maybe it'll just be nifty.